Karsten on Free Software

In the statements of regional groups (eg. Africa, EU…) and individual states, there is a tendency to follow the USA on the argument that incorporating a development agenda into WIPO’s work is fundamentally a technical question; or rather, a question of technical assistance. This would essentially mean: reinforced efforts by rich countries to push proprietary technology into developing countries (which constitutes a transfer of products and services instead of a transfer of knowledge); building of an infrastructure to strictly control and extend the current system of copyright, patents and trademarks. Although I like to be careful with the word “imperialism”, it probably is the appropriate term here.

Most rich countries (for example, Switzerland and Canada) are d’accord. They want to lure the idea of a development into a dark subcommittee, where they are going to quietly strangle it. They do this under the cover of being “pragmatic”, of “starting out with the areas where progress can be made more immediately”. This way, they hope to avoid a rethinking of the direction of WIPO’s work by labeling it a purely academic question.

The Friends of Development group [1] seems to stick together so far. It’s hard to tell if, how far – and much less, through which mysterious back alleys – the influence of hard-core patents, copyrights and trademarks advocates USA and their allies on this issue will succeed in breaking up this alliance.

South Africa and Bolivia, from the Friends of Development group, are arguing to the contrary; however, they seem to be in the minority. Pakistan joins in more or less, doing an important service to the cause by naming examples of patents, copyrights and trademarks hindering development: schoolbooks, pharmaceuticals, software. Chile also seems to be on this side.

This seems a good idea to me. As someone from the German embassy in Geneva told me, many diplomats, especially from the EU, don’t understand why WIPO should need a development agenda. As he said, to them it seems that the topic of development is simply stuck onto every United Nations forum. We will need to make clear why WIPO’s activities play such a fundamtental role for developing countries – and for us all.

So much for an afternoon of statements largely by governmental delegations. This will continue into tomorrow. Eventually, after the governments and the intergovernmental groups, NGOs will get to make statements too.

Interesting enough: At WIPO, even companies are labelled as NGOs. I should hence be speaking of “Civil Society” instead, although I understand that the term is also contested in much the same way.

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[1] This group consists of the 14 countries that co-sponsored the original development agenda proposal at the Assemblies last year, that is, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Venezuela.